A Guide to Giving Your Writing Work and Your Writer Self Agent-Editor-Reader Appeal

Thursday, June 26, 2014

The Truth About Emotional Truth

Emotional truth is what’s really
going on in your story. The real truth of what is happening to your characters.
The surface of things – what your characters allow to be seen and heard – can be
manipulated to conceal what they are feeling. But great stories are all about
feelings revealed.

This is exactly like real life and
real life is the mother lode from which you mine your own emotional truth and
refine it into storytelling treasure. The deeply felt emotions that are the
beating heart of your story. The deeply felt emotions that make your reader
feel deeply too.

I write romantic suspense novels. Scary
things happen in my stories. The main character of the story I’m currently
writing is assaulted and strangled. That happened to me once. My character and I
both survived. Now we both benefit from my emotional truth of that awful
experience.

The powerlessness while it was
happening. The shock and numbness after it was over. The way others might have
seen me at that moment had there been anyone present to see. I didn’t need to
take notes. All of that was branded on my psyche in indelible emotional ink.

Unfortunately we have all had
similarly indelible experiences. We have been changed by them – traumatized by
them – sometimes stopped in our tracks by them. Now we get to convert them into
the very raw material of intense and dramatic and powerful storytelling.

Stephen King said "For me, there have been
times when the act of writing has been an act of faith, a spit in the eye of
despair. Writing is not life, but I think that sometimes it can be a way back
to life."

I say despair can be a way back to the act of writing
at its most vivid and vital center. I’m not talking about memoir writing though
digging for emotional truth is crucial there also. I’m talking about
re-imagining real-life experience into the spit in the eye that is a riveting
piece of original art.

Our emotional truth is not necessarily what we
show on the surface of ourselves. It is more true than what we show on the
surface. Our stories can be the expression of that subterranean truth brought
to the light and wrought in words. The result can be the best writing we have
ever done.

You know what these stories are for you. Write
them the way your heart feels them to be true which may differ from factual truth.
Facts are verifiable. Feelings are not. Someone else’s emotional truth may vary
from yours. That doesn’t make your truth any less valid.

Emotional Truth is individual. Your characters’ truth is what they
honestly feel. That honesty gives your story authenticity. That inner authentic
truth is what really matters. It’s what will make your story really matter – to
you as you write it and to your readers as they read it.

So dig
down and dig deep. You’ll know when you hit the mother lode because it will
zing straight to your heart – just before you zing it straight to the page.

THE PURPOSE OF THIS BLOG

This site is all about passing on a broad range of practical tips and pragmatic advice for writers who want to be published or better published.

ABOUT ALICE

I started this blog to help writers navigate the often confusing world of writing and publishing. Most writers want to create the best work they have in them and get that work published.
I have spent my professional life in writing and publishing – as a book editor, a literary agent, a workshop presenter and a published author. My mission is to share what I have learned from these experiences with as many writers as I can possibly reach.